The Grand Theory of Everything

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. That's what I do: I think, and then I write about it. It can be a problem, especially in times like this, when it creates a ton of work for me.

I've been thinking a lot about rewriting my senior thesis. If you haven't read back that far, my thesis was a 90ish page document that covered 2000+ years of world history (as it related to Christianity and Christendom) and mostly talked a lot about postmodernism. It was a really long read, very dense, and vastly (in my current opinion) incomplete. After my experiences since finishing, after some more reading of other dense material, and after life in general, I've determined that the paper is not only incomplete and (in places) incorrect, but also horribly un-readable. It's packed with scholarly college-talk that means nothing to anybody in the real world. An example:

"Furthermore, the ethoi that define these cultures are never static, and they never completely die when new ethoi arise. An ethos might advance much farther in one geographic area than in another. Different geographic areas may reach the apices of the same ethoi at different times, making a full study of ethoi exceedingly opaque. All this to say that the world is never uniform at a single point in time, and as such, one cannot study ethoi as purely sequential or temporal phenomena, and must set aside chronological biases in order to fully grasp the implications of the term 'ethos.'"

I wrote like a nerd, it was awful. I keep thinking that it's high time to rewrite for content and, more importantly, style. And yet ... it's so much work! I mean, the first time it took me a full two semesters to put together, and then I only barely made my deadline by pulling a few all-nighters. Not to mention all the caffeine I consumed during that period.

On top of this, I have this personality defect that compels me to go all-or-nothing (and yet get it right on the first try) for anything academic. As I was beginning the editing process today (to see where everything stands), I started creating a list of "ideas I'd like to explore" in addition to all the stuff I've already written.

Which means that my little thesis would turn into this grand theory of everything, my every theory and thought combined into one document. The problem is that I can justify it; one of my main points in the text was "holism," the theory that everything is, essentially, linked. It's chaos theory (remmeber Jurassic Park?) for sociology; everything affects everything else.

In other words, my rambling mind saunters from one topic to another without ever breaking for air.

And so I ask you; if I wrote a book, would you read it? I think that it might be interesting, and I'd certainly try to stick to a more readable style (like what I use in my blogs, not that academic horror you saw at the beginning of the post). It's certainly been a dream of mine, to write a book, but all these doubts keep creeping into my head; nobody would read it, I should just wait until I do a PhD before I tackle something this big, I need more experience to talk about all this stuff ... the list goes on.

But would you read it?

Squirrel Squirrel ...

Absolutely priceless. It reminds me of college; the squirrels of UR might as well have been just like this for all the trouble they could give us. My favorite memories include squirrels jumping out of trash cans at us as we'd pass by, giving chase across the academic quad, or my personal favorite, hunting the elusive albino squirrel near Towers.

Missionary Exchange

I've been thinking about the phenomenon of sending out missionaries. As a Christian, I've come to believe that being a missionary is something that everyone is called to do; we're to be missionaries in whatever setting we find ourselves in - at the mall, in the grocery store, at the park, at home, and yes, in foreign countries.

The funny thing to me is what happens when we "send out" missionaries from our home congregations (from our local church) to ... somewhere else. I believe that this is something God encourages, but think about it; what happens when every local church starts to send out missionaries?

You start getting exchanges. For example, I started in Rochester, NY, America. But now I'm living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. So I moved half-way around the world. Fair enough. But now, what happens if people from Melbourne (or Sydney, which is actually what prompted this little ramble) decide to be missionaries to America? I mean, America needs it just like any other nation, and I've heard of missionaries from Africa coming into the States to preach the gospel.

But seriously ... what's the purpose of essentially exchanging missionaries? Wouldn't it make more sense to just keep our own people within our own borders so they don't have to go learn a new language and culture and all that, so they can minister to their own people?

I think there is a reason. God doesn't seem to do things without reasons, and if He told some of us to go from place to place, I think there must be a reason. Here's my thought, and then I'll wait to see what we get from others: the exchange is necessary.

The cultural exchange helps us to see that the world is bigger than ourselves. It helps us to see that we are not alone, and it helps us to learn that God lives and works in all places. God is not static, He's very much dynamic and alive and busy! By working through culture shock and by learning new languages, we grow more humble. We learn that God works in all parts of the world, even when it looks like He's forgotten about a place (think Rwanda or India on this one).